Santa Fe Offers Respite for Artists
New York Times
October 7, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:40 p.m. ET Santa Fe, NM (AP) — Painter Teressa Valla was supposed to be doing work for an upcoming show in Italy. Instead, she roamed the streets of New York, taking photographs.

In the days following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she felt numb, distracted, ill at ease. In need of a respite, she found the prospect of one in New Mexico.

Valla is among some 50 artists expected to take advantage of free living and studio space at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Residencies of two to four weeks are being offered from mid-October through early March.

“What I really hope is to get more centered again,“ said Valla. “Kind of be away from ground zero and to visually make sense of what’s just gone on.“

The program was conceived by the institute’s new director, Diane Karp, who had left New York just before the attacks to take the Santa Fe job.

``We’ve had artists who have written and simply said that they’re so rattled, their lives are such a shambles, that they just need a way to get out of New York City,’’ said Karp.

“It’s been very harrowing,“ said Joseph Nechvatal, who does computer-based paintings and lives about a mile from where the World Trade Center towers crumbled.

“You smell this ongoing smoke that’s billowing out of the ruins. It’s foul. It smells like burning brakes,“ Nechvatal said.

The privately funded art institute, with a budget of about $500,000 a year, sponsors residency programs for emerging artists, but no programs had been scheduled for the next few months.

Karp has rounded up donations to help fund the program, and is looking for more. Artists may choose to work during the respite, but it isn’t required.

Fran Siegel, who watched the collapse of the trade center from the roof of her apartment, said she feels it may be too soon to make art about what happened. “It’s very hard…to somehow make sense of it,“ she said.